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Doctor Faustus: Death of a Bibliophile

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Doctor Faustus: Death of a Bibliophile <http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:21-opus-49392> Connotations Vo!. 1.1 (1991) Doctor Faustus: Death of a Bibliophile PAUL BUDRA Immediately after signing the contract pledging his body and soul to the devil, Dr. Faustus asks Mephostophilis, "where is the place that men call Hell?" (2.1.505)1 Mephostophilis truthfully answers Faustus' inquiry, ''Hell hath no limits" (2.1.510), but Faustus rejects this as "trifles, and meere old wives Tales" (2.1.524). Failing to recognize true information, Faustus requests sensual gratification in the form of a wife. The devil can only provide a woman devil (he cannot deal in the Christian sacrament of marriage) and Faustus is again unsatisfied. Critics of Doctor Faustus have been quick to underline the point: Faustus receives very little in exchange for his soul. But few critics have noted the way in which the demon assuages Faustus' disappointment; he does it with a gift: a book which will allow the doctor to control the weather and call up armoured guards. Faustus promises to keep the tome "as chary as my life" (2.1.551), but he is not entirely satisfied; he wants another book: "Yet faine would I have a booke wherein I might beholde al spels and incantations, that I might raise up spirits when I please" (2.1.551.01- 02). Mephostophilis replies that this information is also in the book he holds in his hand, and the devil turns to the appropriate page. Frustrated, Faustus asks for yet another book that will show "al characters of planets of the heavens" (2.1.551.04-05). "Heere they are too," Mephostophilis replies, turning the page. The scene becomes funny: Faustus. Nay let me have one booke more, and then I have done, wherein I might see a1 plants, hearbes and trees that grow upon the earth. Mephostophilis. Here they be. Faustus. 0 thou art deceived. Mephostophilis. Tut I warrant thee. Turne to them. (2.1.551.08-13) _______________ For debates inspired by this article, please check the Connotations website at <http://www.connotations.de/debbudra00101.htm> 2 PAUL BUDRA Impossibly encyclopedic, this particular book itself would seem to be magic, anticipating Faustus' desires and transforming itself to fulfill them.2 It shows what ever the reader wants, a magical cipher that may, in fact, be filled with blank pages on which the reader projects his desire.3 Faustus is torn between wonderment at its scope and frustration that such a book robs him of the excuse of owning two or three books instead of the one. This remarkable scene highlights a little-recognized fact about the play: Doctor Faustus is as much about books-the physical objects-as knowledge and its use. More than any other English drama of the 16th century, Doctor Faustus revolves around the text, the reader's manipulation of it, and its manipulation of the reader. Faustus enters the stage with books in hand and leaves it with books on his mind; in between he both transforms and is transformed by the printed word. His tragedy is largely a failure to raise this relationship from physical possession and mere technique to the complex dialectic of faith that is the proper response to sacred text. I The book is established as the dominant object of the play in the first scene. The Chorus prologue introduces Faustus as "this the man that in his study sits" (Chorus 1.28), but the opening direction, "Enter Faustus in his study," suggests a walk-on entrance. Presumably he enters, or is "discovered in," the inner stage, and, over the course of his 90 line monologue, moves forward so he can command his servant Wagner to fetch the magicians Valdes and Cornelius.4 The location of "his study" is conveyed to the audience by the simplest of portable props: books. Faustus quotes from Aristotle (and Ramus?),5 Galen, Justinian, and the Bible, indicating the presence of four books.6 He looks for specific quotations with the asides, "Galen come," "where is Justinian?" and "Jeromes Bible Faustus, view it well," obvious clues to the actor to pick up the books, flip through them, and slam them shut impatiently. The A text does not allow for an inner stage, so unless a rudimentary set (say a book-laden table) is in place, the actor would have to carry his books on with him? The image of the Faustus Doctor Faustus: Death of a Bibliophile 3 burdened by books would alert the largely illiterate audience to his scholar's status. The library Faustus carries contains classical authors who represent the great academic pursuits of philosophy, medicine, and law. It also contains the Vulgate, at least the New Testament. This small collection, then, is a bringing together of the best of the classical wisdom and Christian truth. Faustus' use of this marvelous source of knowledge is revealing: he dismisses the classical authors with an abruptness which indicates that his ultimate decision to pursue magic is actually a foredrawn conclusion. His misreading of the Scriptures (Rom. 6:23, 1 John 1:8)-the one book all his audience would recognize8-would have been clear to the audience if the other logical errors9 of the soliloquy proved too obscure.10 This flippant disregard for the contents of his books contrasts with Faustus' love of books as physical objects, a love first revealed us near the end of his opening monologuell when he turns to what the Good Angel calls "that damned booke" (1.1.97). Putting aside the Bible, he picks up the fifth and last book and declares These Metaphisicks of Magitians, And Negromantick bookes are heavenly. Lines, Circles, Signes, Letters, and Characters, I these are those that Faustus most desires. o what a world of profite and delight, Of power, of honour, and omnipotence, Is promised to the Studious Artizan? (1.1.75-82) The ''heavenly'' is ironic, and the speed with which the first books were dismissed is emphasized by the time spent on this particular tome.12 It is significant that he does not, as he did with the previous books, quote its content. It captivates his imagination because of its nature as a physical object.13 Book in hand, Faustus lists the things that he will accomplish once he is indoctrinated in the black arts: he will command the elements of nature themselves. Owning the right book is, for Faustus, synonymous with immediate knowledge and, therefore, power. When Valdes and Comelius learn of Faustus' plan to pursue magic, they tell him that "these bookes, thy wit, and our experience, / Shall 4 PAUL BUDRA make all Nations to Canonize us" (1.1.146-47). "These bookes" presumably refer to volumes that Valdes and his partner carry. Wit and experience, however, end up having little to do with the process of becoming a magician. The magicians, like Faustus, jump from physical possession of the books to omnipotence. Valdes summarizes the necessary apprenticeship in five lines: Then hast thee to some solitary Grove, And beare wise Bacons, and Abanus workes, The Hebrew Psalter, and new Testament; And whatsoever else is requisite, We will informe thee e'er our conference cease. (1.1.180-84) Cornelius has to remind Valdes that Faustus must be instructed in certain rudiments before he can begin, but this tutelage takes only one evening, excluding the time that Faustus allots for dinner (1.1.190). That same night, Faustus calls up Mephostophilis.14 Significantly, Valdes proposes four volumes, the number of books Faustus has just rejected. This library, however, will not be dismissed; rather, it will be consulted with precision for "names of holy Saints, / Figures of every adjunct to the heavens, / And Characters of Signes" (1.3.238- 40) when Faustus carries them on stage in 1.3. By the end of Act 1, then, we may have seen as many as nine books carried about the stage: Faustus' magic book and the four he rejects, as well as Valdes' four. The image of the scholar carrying books has appeared four times: at Faustus' entrance in 1.1 and 1.3, and in the persons of Valdes and Cornelius. In 2.1 Mephostophilis gives Faustus the miraculously complete book of spells and arcane facts. In 2.2 the devils repeat the pattern of distracting Faustus from true knowledge with the gift of books. Faustus demands from Mephosto­ philis the name of the creator of the universe. The devil cannot repeat it, and Faustus perceives that he has been cheated. He calls on Christ to save his distressed soul, but his prayer is cut short by the appearance of Lucifer and Beelzebub, who frighten Faustus into a paradoxical demonic repentance: "Faustus vowes never to looke to heaven / Never to name God, or to pray to him, / To bume his Scriptures" (2.2.648-50). The latter promise is telling: Faustus naively Doctor Fallstlls: Death of a Bibliophile 5 believes that the destruction of physical text will effect the scope of Christian faith. Lucifer now distracts Faustus with a Spenserian parade of the Seven Deadly Sins (including Envy, who would have all books burned because he cannot read) and then makes Faustus the gift of a book: "peruse this booke, and view it throughly, / And thou shalt tume thy selfe into what shape thou wilt" (2.2.717-18). Faustus repeats the words of thanks he gave to Mephostophilis-''This will I keepe as chary as my life" (2.2.719)-and he does put the information in this book to use. Later in the play he will change his body so that he can be dismembered and decapitated without harm, and so he can eat entire cartloads of hay.
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